While it certainly makes sense to consider the qualities of the creator when determining whether a work is art, it also makes sense to consider only the qualities of the work itself. On this approach, what makes a work art are these qualities. Naturally, it also makes sense to consider the effect of this qualities on the audience as a key part of sorting out art. For example, David Hume’s somewhat confusing theory of beauty seems to make beauty a matter of how the qualities of an object affect the audience. Other thinkers, such as Plato, take the quality of beauty to be an objective feature of reality. Defining art in terms of objective beauty would seem to entail that the qualities of the work determine whether it is art. Since one could go on almost forever considering various qualities, it is fortunate this essay does not require a theory of what qualities of a work make it art. All I need is the hypothesis, for the sake of the discussion to follow, that something being art is a. . .